Photographic film materials are known in which a black-and-white photographic film emulsion is coated onto a substrate and covered with a colored pattern.
One such film material is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,971,869, which includes a black-and-white photographic film emulsion which is coated onto a substrate. The emulsion is covered with a repetitive pattern of a triad of color stripes, such as, yellow, green and cyan stripes, where at least one of the colors is a non-primary color. Alternatively, color stripes of unsaturated hues, such as, for example, pastel yellow, pastel green and pastel cyan stripes, where one of the colors is a non-primary unsaturated hue, may be used. In a further embodiment, color stripes of unsaturated hues of any color could be used.
Full color prints or enlargements are made from images recorded on a color film as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,971,869 are made by a hybrid process in which the film is electronically scanned to extract color information and an optical or electronic method is used to extract detail information.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,397,928 discloses a process for producing a color solid image pick-up element base plate. The process comprises the steps of a) coating a solvent permeation preventing layer on the base plate with a silver halide emulsion layer; b) forming a micro-color filter composed of at least two-color separation filter elements by repeatedly applying an image exposure and a color development to the silver halide emulsion layer for each color; c) forming a protective layer on the whole surface of the solid image pick-up element base plate; and d) removing the protective layer corresponding to bonding pat portions of the solid image pick-up element base plate to reveal the bonding pat portions. It is preferred that a blackened silver pattern is formed in the silver halide emulsion layer at the portions which correspond to the bonding pat portions by applying a light exposure to those portions and processing the emulsion layer using a black-and-white development after the formation of the micro-color filter and before the formation of the protective layer.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,077,155 discloses a process for imaging opaque grid lines for a color filter array element. The process comprises the steps of a) exposing a photographic element comprising an unhardened gelatin-silver halide emulsion coated onto a support to light through a mask which defines the grid pattern, at a total dry weight coverage of at least 0.5 gm.sup.-2 ; b) developing the element with a tanning developer to develop the exposed areas of the grid lines; c) washing off the undeveloped emulsion leaving the grid line pattern; and d) drying the element to produce open cells divided by opaque lines of silver in hardened gelatin which are greater than 0.3 mm in height above the support. Optionally, the cellular element so formed is coated with a polymer dye-receiving layer and individual dyes are thermally transferred to form a color filter array element having a repeating mosaic pattern of colorants in a polymer binder which comprises color patches bounded by opaque lines in a grid pattern.
EP 0 615 161 discloses a photographic print material for the preparation of a multi-color filter array which comprises a glass support carrying separate silver halide emulsion layers which are sensitive to blue, green and red light respectively, each layer respectively containing yellow, magenta and cyan dye forming color couplers. The red-sensitive layer is furthest from the support and each emulsion layer has the equivalent ratio of silver halide to color coupler of at least 1. The print material is pixel wise exposed and processed to give a color matrix of blue, green and red pixels by subtractive color photography. The multi-color filter array element so formed may be used in a multi-color liquid crystal display device.
Other color filter arrays and methods of making such arrays are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,383,017, 4,370,396, 4,450,215, 4,764,670, 4,876,166, 4,876,167, 4,923,860, 4,975,410, 4,978,652, 4,987,043, 5,122,428 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,229,232.
EP 0 526 931 discloses a method of extracting spectral image records from silver halide elements by producing spectrally non-co-extensive images by processing the element, scanning these images and deriving image records which correspond to the scanned images. The element has N+1 silver halide layer units where N=1 to 9 and the processing produces silver images in all N+1 units, the dyes being distinguishable from the other dye images in at least N units. A first image record is obtained by scanning in a spectral region of the silver absorption and minimal dye absorption. Further scans are performed in N spectral regions corresponding to the different dye images, all the information from all the scans being converted to N+1 image records. Simplified silver halide processing is provided in that the silver image is not bleached, and optionally, fixing can also be eliminated.
Scanners for scanning photographic material including a color filter array tend to be complex as several passes may need to be made of the material to extract all the color information. In such scanners, the sensor may be a color sensor having areas which are sensitive to radiation in different wavelength bands and a single pass of the material being scanned is required. Alternatively, the scanner may include filters for the sensor which, for each pass of the scanner, extract one color record from the material. In either case, the extracted color records are then aligned to reconstruct a color image. Registration problems may be experienced when aligning the color records.